Intro

RStudio 1.4 added support for the Visual Mode of editing R Markdown! This is a WYSIWYM editor, meaning:

WYSIWYM is an acronym that stands for What you see is what you mean. This was positioned to not be confused with WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). The idea behind WYSIWYG is to display text on screen in much the exact same way as they will appear when printed on paper.

WYSIWYM means that it can be translated differently, (where) the same content can lead to different output formats .

The Visual R Markdown allows for editing in plain text or visual mode, along with a visual representation of what it will actually look like while maintaining the ability to output to HTML or PDF.

Table 1 - Links to RStudio 1.4 Preview by Operating System
OS Download Size SHA-256
Windows 10 RStudio-1.4.1717.exe
 156.18 MB 71b36e64
macOS 10.14+ RStudio-1.4.1717.dmg
 203.06 MB 2cf2549d
Ubuntu 18/Debian 10 rstudio-1.4.1717-amd64.deb
 122.51 MB e27b2645
Fedora 19/Red Hat 7 rstudio-1.4.1717-x86_64.rpm
 138.42 MB 648e2be0
Fedora 28/Red Hat 8 rstudio-1.4.1717-x86_64.rpm
 138.39 MB c76f620a
Debian 9 rstudio-1.4.1717-amd64.deb
 123.29 MB e4ea3a60
OpenSUSE 15 rstudio-1.4.1717-x86_64.rpm
 123.15 MB e69d55db

Full guide guide from the RStudio dev team that covers all the major topics and sub topics of the new features.

Enabling Visual Mode

Markdown documents can be edited in either source or visual m button at the top-right of the document toolbar (or alternatively the ⌘ + ⇧ + F12 keyboard shortcut):

YAML/Editor Options

Please see long section of the guide.

Canonical Mode

If you have a workflow that involves editing in both visual and source mode, you may want to ensure that the same markdown is written no matter which mode edits originate from. You can accomplish this using the canonical option. For example:

---
title: "My Document"
editor_options:
  markdown:
    wrap: 72
    references: 
      location: block
    canonical: true
---

Editor Toolbar

The editor toolbar includes buttons for the most commonly used formatting commands:

Additional commands are available on the Format, Insert, and Table menus:

Format

Insert

Table

Insert Anything

Command Keyboard Shortcut Markdown Shortcut
Bold ⌘ B **bold**
Italic ⌘ I *italic*
Code ⌘ D `code`
Link ⌘ K <href>
Heading 1 ⌥⌘ 1 #
Heading 2 ⌥⌘ 2 ##
Heading 3 ⌥⌘ 3 ###
R Code Chunk ⌥⌘ I ```{r}

You can also use the catch-all ⌘/ shortcut to insert just about anything. Just execute the shortcut then type what you want to insert. For example:

Use the bullet

  • Output

Or numbered

  1. Number list!

Here’s a link - how to turn into an image?

Technical Writing

Equations

LaTeX equations are authored using standard Pandoc markdown syntax (the editor will automatically recognize the syntax and treat the equation as math). When you aren’t directly editing an equation it will appear as rendered math:

\[ P(E) = {n \choose k} p^k (2-p)^{n-k} \]

Footnotes

You can include footnotes using the Insert -> Footnote command (or the ⇧ ⌘ F7 keyboard shortcut). Footnote editing occurs in a pane immediately below the main document:1 <- NOTE THE FOOTMARK

Content Editing

Comments

When reviewing an R Markdown document you often want to provide inline comments with suggested revisions. This is possible in R Markdown using HTML comments (which are ignored by all output formats). Visual mode includes a command for inserting HTML comments as well as special highlighting treatment to easily parse out editing comments from surrounding text.

Tables

You can insert table using the Table menu. You can then use either the main menu or a context menu to insert and delete table rows and columns:

Lists

you can create a new list by just typing - or 1. at the beginning of an empty paragraph. To add items to the list, just press Enter within a list item. To exit the list, press Enter within an empty list item.

Empty Item (enter to exit list) Tab (add sublist) Backspace (add block)

Special Characters

Can use either :grinning: 😀 or Insert -> Special Characters -> Emoji ...

Unicode can also be inserted w/ Insert -> Special Characters -> Unicode ...

Bibliographies

R Markdown supports bibliographies in a wide variety of formats including BibTeX and CSL. Add a bibliography to your document using the bibliography YAML metadata field. For example:

---
title: "My Document"
bibliography: references.bib
link-citations: true
---

Inserting Citations

You insert citations by either using the Insert -> Citation command or by using markdown syntax directly (e.g. [@cite]).

Citations go inside square brackets and are separated by semicolons. Each citation must have a key, composed of ‘@’ + the citation identifier from the database, and may optionally have a prefix, a locator, and a suffix. The citation key must begin with a letter, digit, or _, and may contain alphanumerics, _, and internal punctuation characters (:.#$%&-+?<>~/). Here are some examples:

(Rottman-Sagebiel et al. 2018)

DEMO OF CITATION WITH INSERT

Embedded Code

Source code which you include in an R Markdown document can either by for display only or can be executed by knitr as part of rendering. Code can furthermore be either inline or block (e.g. an Rmd code chunk).

Displaying Code

To display but not execute code, either use the Insert -> Code Block menu item, or start a new line and type either:

  1. ``` (for a plain code block); or

  2. ```<lang> (where <lang> is a language) for a code block with syntax highlighting.

Then press the Enter key. To display code inline, simply surround text with backticks (`code`), or use the Format -> Code menu item.

library(tidyverse)
library(palmerpenguins)

penguins %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = body_weight_g, y = flipper_length_mm, color = species)) +
  geom_point()

Code Chunks

To insert an executable code chunk, use the Insert -> Code Chunk menu item, or start a new line and type:

```{r}

Then press the Enter key. Note that r could be another language supported by knitr (e.g. python or sql) and you can also include a chunk label and other chunk options.

To include inline R code, you just create normal inline code (e.g. by using backticks or the ⌘ D shortcut) but preface it with r. For example, this inline code will be executed by knitr: 2021-08-26. Note that when the code displays in visual mode it won’t have the backticks (but they will still appear in source mode).

penguin_plot <- penguins %>% 
  na.omit() %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = body_mass_g, y = flipper_length_mm)) +
  geom_point(aes(color = species)) +
  labs(title = "Important Penguins") +
  geom_smooth(method = "lm", color = "black")

penguin_plot

R generated Tables

library(gt)

penguins %>% 
  na.omit() %>% 
  select(species, bill_length_mm, body_mass_g) %>% 
  head() %>% 
  gt()
species bill_length_mm body_mass_g
Adelie 39.1 3750
Adelie 39.5 3800
Adelie 40.3 3250
Adelie 36.7 3450
Adelie 39.3 3650
Adelie 38.9 3625
 
library(reactable)
penguins %>% 
  filter(species == "Adelie") %>% 
  na.omit() %>% 
  select(species, bill_length_mm, body_mass_g) %>% 
  reactable(defaultPageSize = 5)
penguins %>% 
  select(1:4) %>% 
  DT::datatable()
plotly::ggplotly(penguin_plot)
## `geom_smooth()` using formula 'y ~ x'
Rottman-Sagebiel, Rebecca, Nicole Cupples, Chen Pin Wang, Seth Cope, Stephanie Pastewait, Hanna Braden, Daniel MacCarthy, et al. 2018. “A Pharmacist-Led Transitional Care Program to Reduce Hospital Readmissions in Older Adults.” Federal Practitioner 35 (12): 42–50. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6366589/.

  1. Very fancy footnote to this portion↩︎